Reviews, October 2017

An Oath of Dogs —
Wendy N. Wagner

2017’s
An
Oath of Dogs
is a standalone SF novel by Wendy N. Wagner.

A
near-fatal accident has left Kate Standish traumatized, paralyzed by
acrophobia. Thanks to her therapeutic dog Hattie, Standish is able to
function well enough to work again. Thanks to the selfless
benevolence of the Songheuser company, she has a job wherein she can
demonstrate her hard-won stability.

Four Roads Cross —
Max Gladstone
Craft Sequence, book 5

Four
Roads Cross
is the fifth book published in Max Gladstone’s Craft
sequence. It is the fourth book by internal chronology.

Many
in Alt Coulumb believe that Seril the Moon Goddess betrayed them when
she left the city to fight and die in the God Wars. Seril has revived
and returned, sans publicity. She helps her people where she can do
so without revealing herself. The city’s priests know, but are
still considering how best to handle Seril’s reappearance.

When
Seril dispatches one of her gargoyles to save a woman from muggers,
the victim turns out to be one of Alt Coulumb’s Criers, the local
equivalent of a plucky reporter. Being saved from a brutal death is
one thing, but a story is a story. The world will learn the goddess
walks again.

A Fond Farewell to Dying —
Syd Logsdon

1981’s
A
Fond Farewell to Dying
is a novel-length expansion of Syd Logsdon’s 1978 novella To
Go Not Gently.

Of
all the nations of Earth, India has been least affected by the
Cataclysm that ended Euro-American domination of the world. Though
even India was changed: sea level rise has cut it off from mainland
Asia and the fallout that made it over the Himalayas has forced birth
rates below replacement levels. Two centuries after the nuclear
conflict, India is a much emptier place.

Scientist
David Singer has abandoned the North America of his birth for India,
the most advanced nation on the planet. Now calling himself Ram David
Singh, he is researching what he conceives as immortality tech. The
odds of an American hick garnering the required resources from the
Indian state may seen poor, but geopolitics is his friend.

The Red Ring —
Jen Frankel
Blood & Magic, book 2

2014’s
The
Red Ring is
the second volume in Jen Frankel’s Blood
& Magic
series. My review of book one, The Last Rite, is here.

In
the previous volume, in order defeat a vicious warlock,
almost-sixteen year old Maggie Stuart gave up her magic and now must
live as a muggle. None of her former friends remember that she saved
them from the warlock (or even that they had been her friends). Her
loathsome mentor is pressuring her for sex. If she had any friends,
she might cry on their shoulders … but the last three years has
sent her decidedly into social reject territory.

Hiromu Arakawa
Fullmetal Alchemist, book 8

Viz’
Fullmetal
Alchemist (3-in-1 Edition), Volumes 22–24 includes
Volumes 22, 23, and 24 of the original Japanese manga1.
Story and art are by Hiromu Arakawa; English translation by Akira
Watanabe; English adaptation by Jake Forbes; touch-up art and
lettering by Wayne Truman. The original manga appeared in 2009.

Adults
are offered many opportunities to defer gratification, such as
spacing out the last few volumes of a limited series instead of
hoovering them up all at once. Adults can also say “screw delayed
gratification; finish the series!” and get away with it. Guess
which kind of adult I am.

Which
brings us to the eighth, second-to-last, 3-in-1 omnibus of Fullmetal
Alchemist.
In this volume, plans come together. Sorta kinda.

Jade City —
Fonda Lee
Green Bone Saga, book 1

2017’s
Jade
City
is the first installment in Fonda Lee’s Green
Bone Saga secondary-world
kung-fu gangster saga. At 512 pages, it’s significantly longer than
either Exo’s
369 pages or Zeroboxer’s
351. It’s also significantly more ambitious.

The
island of Kekon is the only known source of jade, which in this world
is a miraculous substance that can grant enhanced abilities to those
few whom it does not drive mad or kill. The minority who can use it
safely are known as Green Bones. Custom grants the Green Bones a role
as protectors of Kekon and its merchants (whether the merchants want
protection or not). Since the Green Bone clans are constantly
feuding, the island is far from peaceful.

Exo —
Steven Gould
Jumper, book 4

2015’s
Exo
is the fourth book in Steven Gould’s long-running Jumper series.

Cent
is one of just three humans able to teleport; the other two are her
mother Millie and her father Davy. The ability allows the family to
treat the entire planet as their home. It has also led to decades of
persecution (stalking, abduction, imprisonment) by those determined
to control and exploit the trio.

So
far, they have survived by hiding. Only a handful of people know what
the three can do. Thanks to Cent’s current hobby, that’s going to
change.

The Exiles Trilogy —
Ben Bova

1971’s
Exiled
From Earth,
1972’s Flight
of Exiles,
and 1975’s End
of Exile
form Ben Bova’s Exile Trilogy.

Cast
out from overcrowded Earth, will our heroes be able to maintain a
stable culture for the decades or centuries it will take to find a
new Earth … or will they, like pretty much every other generation
ship in the genre — last week’s excepted — end up recapitulating
Robert Heinlein’s Orphans
of the Sky?

Ward Against Darkness —
Melanie Card
Chronicles of a Reluctant Necromancer, book 2

2013’s
Ward Against Darkness is
the second volume in Melanie Card’s Chronicles
of a Reluctant Necromancer series.

The
good news is that Ward De’Ath is spending less time worrying about
being outed as a practitioner of the forbidden surgical arts. That’s
because he is facing a far more immediate problem: a band of highly
motivated assassins want to kill Ward and his dead…ish companion Celia.

Ward
and Celia manage to elude their hunters and head for a wilderness
that might just be wild enough to hide them. There’s just one
catch.

Hiromu Arakawa
Fullmetal Alchemist, book 7

Viz’
Fullmetal
Alchemist (3-in-1 Edition), Volumes 19–21 includes
Volumes 19, 20, and 21 of the original Japanese manga [1]. Story and
art are by Hiromu Arakawa; English translation by Akira Watanabe;
English adaptation by Jake Forbes; touch-up art and lettering by
Wayne Truman. The original manga appeared in 2008.

All
seems lost!

Roy
Mustang’s trusted subordinates have been scattered across Amestris;

Major
General Olivier Mira Armstrong (formerly of Briggs Fortress) appears
to have gone over to Team Evil, leaving her beloved Fortress in the
hands of officers very definitely loyal to the malevolent Father;

the
great transmutation circle needed for the sacrifice of
an entire nation
is almost finished;

and
worst of all, Alphonse Elric’s soul is beginning to reject the
armour that houses it.

Emissaries From The Dead —
Adam-Troy Castro
Andrea Cort, book 1

2008’s
Emissaries
from the Dead is
the second story and first novel in Adam-Troy Castro’s Andrea
Cort series.

When
she was eight, Andrea Cort’s home community on Bocai descended into
violent mass insanity. Cort succumbed to the madness but emerged one
of the few survivors. Cort
still thinks of herself as a Monster-with-a-capital-M but her trauma
makes her valuable to the Homo Sapiens Confederacy Diplomatic Corps.
The Corps stands between Cort and the aliens who would like her tried
for her past. If Cort is to stay within the Corps’ safe harbour,
she must accept every crappy assignment they hand her.

Which
is how Associate Legal Counsel for the Homo Sapiens Confederacy
Diplomatic Corps Judge Advocate Andrea Cort finds herself headed to
One One One, with strict orders to find a politically acceptable
person to blame for a brutal murder, regardless of who the actual
killer might be.

Fuzzy Sapiens —
H. Beam Piper
Little Fuzzy, book 2

1964’s
Fuzzy
Sapiens,
first published under the title The
Other Human Race, is the sequel1 to H. Beam Piper’s Little
Fuzzy.

Previously:
old Jack Holloway, Ben Rainsford, Ruth Otheris, and their allies
triumphed over the forces of pure capitalist evil, as represented by
Victor Grego and his Chartered Zarathustra Company. Zarathustra was
reclassified from Class-III to Class-IV and its native Fuzzies
legally accepted as people.

Now
Jack and his friends get to grapple with the consequences of winning.

Noumenon —
Marina J. Lostetter

Reggie
Straifer is twice lucky. First, he has boosted his career with his
discovery of an enigmatic stellar object, one that is quite possibly
artificial. Second, he has made his discovery at a time when humanity
has both the means and the will to travel to that distant object.

There’s
just one catch: the round trip will take two thousand years by
Earth’s clocks and over two centuries by any traveller’s clock.
Happily, the means and the will to deal with that issue also exist.
Less happily, the means turns out to be inhumane.

All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault —
James Alan Gardner
Dark Versus Spark, book 1

I’m an award-winning writer, editor and teacher of science fiction
and fantasy. I’ve published nine novels and a host of short stories
in leading SF&F outlets. In addition to writing, I’m strongly
interested in math and geology. In my spare time, I teach kung fu to
kids and (unsuccessfully) to my rabbit.

2017’s
All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault is
the first novel in James Alan Gardner’s new Dark
versus Spark series.

Kim
Lam came to the University of Waterloo to reinvent themself, to go
from gender to assertiveness. Thanks to some Mad Science, they will
succeed beyond their wildest dreams.

An Unkindness of Magicians —
Kat Howard

Kat
Howard’s 2017 An
Unkindness of Magicians is
a standalone urban fantasy.

Every
twenty years, the magical houses of New York City’s Unseen World
struggle for dominance in a series of increasingly dangerous contests
known as the Turning. This time, the Turning is seven years early.
The premature Turning is just one of the disquieting anomalies
plaguing the Unseen World. Which may hint that magic itself may be
dying.

The Makeshift Rocket —
Poul Anderson

1962’s
standalone comic SF novel The
Makeshift Rocket
is an expansion of Poul Anderson’s 1958 A Bicycle Built for Brew.

The
gyrogravitic generator gave humans and Martians cheap space flight
and the ability to transform any dead rock in space into an
acceptable facsimile of a habitable world, one with Earth-like
gravity and an atmosphere. Any gang of idiots with enough money could
create their own pocket nation out in the Asteroid belt. Many idiots did.

Binti: The Night Masquerade —
Nnedi Okorafor
Binti, book 3

2018’s
Binti:
The Night Masquerade is
the third and possibly final instalment in Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series.

Still
digesting the lessons learned in Binti:
Home,
young Binti is woken by a dreadful vision: her family trapped in the
basement of their burning dwelling. She rushes home. She finds
charred ruins and no visible survivors.

Back From Chaos —
Yvonne Hertzberger
Earth's Pendulum, book 1

Yvonne
Hertzberger has been a Jill of all Trades; actor, singer, gardener,
hairstylist, and decorator. This long-time student of human nature,
empty nester, retiree and late bloomer, finally found her calling
writing epic fantasy. She lives with her spouse, Mark, in Stratford,
Ontario.

2011’s
Back
from Chaos
is the first volume in Hertzberger’s Earth’s
Pendulum series.

What
the Catanians get — much to the surprise of Marja, sole remaining
member of Catania’s royal family — are reason and conciliation. The
conquerors attempt to find a solution that will prevent future wars.

Hiromu Arakawa
Fullmetal Alchemist, book 6

Viz’
Fullmetal
Alchemist (3-in-1 Edition), Volumes 16–18 includes
Volumes 16, 17, and 18 of the original Japanese manga1. Story and
art are by Hiromu Arakawa; English translation by Akira Watanabe;
English adaptation by Jake Forbes; touch-up art and lettering by
Wayne Truman. The original manga appeared in 2007.

Still
processing the revelations of the last few issues, Alphonse and
Edward Elric head north to the Briggs’ Fortress, the kingdom of
Amestris’ primary defence against neighbouring Drachma. In any
sensible universe, Briggs’ commanding officer Major General
Armstrong would be the most terrifying aspect of the trip. But as
this is Fullmetal
Alchemist,
there’s far worse waiting for the brothers than one ruthless senior
officer.

The Prey of Gods —
Nicky Drayden

Sydney
Mazwai may be passing as a simple beautician now, but she has big
plans. She appears to be just another human … but she is a being of
power, a being who is scheming to unleash a new age of gods on
humanity. The chaos will be delightful! And Sydney intends to be the
greatest, meanest god of all.

Mr.
Tau’s protégée Nomvula could just possibly derail her plans, but
Sydney isn’t worried. Nomvula is, after all, only one little girl.
How much trouble could one little girl cause? Even if that little
girl is a godling herself?

A World Out of Time —
Larry Niven

ISFDB
lists 1976’s A
World Out of Time
as one of Larry Niven’s State novels1, which it is. I liked to
think of it as the last fun Niven novel. Having reread it, I am not
so sure that’s right.

Jerome
Branch Corbell had himself frozen in 1970 in a desperate bid to
escape terminal cancer. In 2190, a man with Corbell’s memories woke
up to discover a world unlike any Corbell had expected back in 1970,
a world that expected him to expiate a crime he had no memory of
committing … with a mission that would consume three centuries.